tsumi (sin)
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Itachi reflects on why he kept Sasuke alive all these years. (Note: Itachi and Sasuke pairing)


**Fandom: Naruto  
Title: tsumi. (sin.)  
Rating: pg-13  
Pairing: Itachi + Sasuke  
Description: ****Itachi reflects on why he kept Sasuke alive all these years. (Note: Itachi and Sasuke pairing)**

**Disclaimer: Naruto isn****'****t mine.**

Even though it is unlike me to be sentimental, I find myself recalling the only image in my head that reminds me that I am chained by blood to someone in this existence of mine. And bound by flesh, my hazy memories somehow reveal to me through the blur in my mind of days long past.

Whenever I catch myself thinking of him, his face isn't horrified by the massacre. I somehow feel guilty over the pout he gave me whenever I put on my shoes to leave.

Each time he came to me with an anticipation of hope, wondering if I cared, I would dismiss the wishful face with a poke. I would imprint a red mark on his forehead.

Making sure that he was mine. All mine. Hurt, but remembered.

At that moment of power and possession, I would find myself drunk with affections close to sadistic measures. He would give me that sad face I loved so well. I always wanted to hold his chin to tell him how much I thought his cute face became more likeable when he looked at me so angrily.

Someday, I will.

Camouflaged by your hatred for me, for different reasons,

Let us go to hell together.  
And we won't ever have to leave one another ever, ever again…

**tsumi. (sin.)  
By miyamoto yui  
**  
In the blueness that encompasses the night like a dark violet blanket that suffocates innocents in their sleep by a silent murderer, the wind passes through and the leaves of the trees rustle as if wishing to be saved by the quiet chaos around them. It is within this time that, once more, no one hears the cries of those lost souls trying to claim a home of a body as their own.

He closes his eyes as he leans his back on a tree, but this resting period does him no good. His partner is nearby, but they do not say anything to one another.  
He hates to waste his breath. The boy's cape wraps around his body, a black cocoon painted with red clouds. He holds it a bit tighter around himself, forcing himself to sleep. But nothing is helping him to get into the state of slumber.

Instead, he is filled with a feeling that he is familiar with, and yet not so. It is a confusing thing to be in between emotions that contrast one another, and yet people are so contradicting that this shouldn't surprise anyone.

And yet, there is this persistent feeling within him that wants to help and devour him at the same time.  
The hatred he feels, the apathy towards all things, is temporarily silenced as he listens for an answer that he knows shouldn't ever come.

For, within his questions, there are no answers. There are just choices made in terms of broadening his mind and increasing his strength.

Test after test after test…

It makes him smirk that if he rips some skin from his body, would he still be able to bleed? Was that not one of the things he gave up in order to become more powerful? What did it truly mean to become unemotional and yet be filled with so much of an emotion that it made your body convulse out of disgust?

Through it all, he could still feel the tingling warmth of his hand. The surge of power trembled as he held the body of his future executioner in his hand.  
Lifting his body off the ground and into the wall, he couldn't do anything but smile inside of himself. How beautiful his little brother had grown with the advice he had given him. For once, he listened to him. Even though he was weak, he had taken one piece of advice to heart and followed it thoroughly.

But quietly, in his head, he thought, "You are still too weak to kill me, Sasuke."

Holding him in his hand, he felt like he had never left at all. That no time had passed since the day he was seven years old with those wide eyes and that pout that make him question himself until he became so irritated that he wouldn't even reveal to Sasuke that he was the cause of his bitterness.

Pressing his body against his, in a low whisper, he leaned his head forward with his lips almost touching Sasuke's ear as he said, "You're weak."

How much he enjoyed raping and scraping his beloved's humanity.

Even though to the eyes of others around them, his actions were useless, he was enjoying it quite nicely. There was probably no point in beating this boy except for the obvious reason of having him become more and more angry and viewing him as a vile thing that cursedly was an extension made of the same blood and flesh as his own.  
He, who held onto the boy in silent desperation, held a deeper intention than this. Somewhere inside of him, he wanted his little brother to see only him.

To see him as the way he was before…  
**  
*/*/*/*/***

"Aniki~!"

He shouted at me as he ran to the front as I sat down to take off my shoes. Wrapping his small arms around me from behind, he leaned his chin on my right shoulder and blinked at me. In the middle of taking off my shoes, I would stop and turn my head to watch those eyes that would look at me so adoringly.  
I sighed, not knowing whether or not I should have been apathetic, used to the whole situation, or acted  
irritated by his energetic nature. It sometimes frightened me about how much someone could be so enthusiastic about studying something that was passed down from generation to generation.

I was bored of everything.

In the end, I only put my hand on the top of his head as he smiled. Pulling on my sleeve as I resumed taking off my shoes, he asked, "What did you do today? What did your group do today, Aniki?"  
"We did the same things as I told you yesterday," I answered back, looking at him, not wanting to get up just yet.  
"What did you do today then?"  
"We did…" he started to explain to me with a twinkle in his eyes. A brightness that never seemed to fade, but grew the more he learned his art.

I was so tired, Sasuke. How could you be in love with this whole system? It seemed almost meaningless because I was coming to the point of having nothing to challenge me. That's why I went to that group…

And yet, here my little brother could still look at me as if I was the best brother I could be for him when all I did was tease him for my own amusement. He never seemed to mind my jokes.

I asked him once when he was five. He told me, "Because I love you, Aniki. I know you do it 'cause you care."  
Did I really? Was that how it looked in your eyes?

As he was growing up, I was waiting for him to surpass me, but he was much too slow about the whole thing. Maybe that was good in a sense. That meant that I could enjoy him more. That one day he finds out what this all meant, then I would have him tell me.

Tell me why is it that you see something that I can't?

My teachers kept on telling me that I had good technique. No one could beat me there, but there was something missing. Something definitely empty, blank, and void from the art that I was performing and learning.  
"No other emotion is as strong as hate," someone had told me and I kept that in mind. It became such an obsessive theme that I couldn't see past it.

And as I believed in it, you no longer hugged me. No one else really saw. Father thought I was strange, but you would still come up to me and touch me, Sasuke. Even though you were scared, you still wanted to care about me even though I was changing in a way that no one could understand, even myself.

"Why do you continue to want to learn this art, Sasuke?" I asked once before I left. And you answered, "Because I love it. It's fun."

Were love and hate the same? Were they equal in measure? Even though Sasuke did not master techniques as quickly as me or graduated faster than me, he held that missing something that I could not grasp.

What was this "love" he spoke about?

Just a bit, I became jealous of his deep understanding for something he was only beginning to master.

Once, I ran away to the forest and Sasuke followed me. He was only six, but he ran after me as far as he could with all of his might. I stood before him and I shook my head as I scolded, "Why did you follow me?!"  
"Because you looked like you were going away, Aniki."

His eyes were filled with tears, an honesty that I could never even begin to possess. I hated the fact that he could be so blunt and kind-hearted. Yet, this was the cause of his weakness, wasn't it? Compassion was a luxury for those who could afford to sacrifice some of their life.

"Where would I go, Sasuke? There's nowhere _to_ go."

My expertise was coming to a point of fossilization. I still wanted to grow and become stronger, but there was no one to guide me. I felt so confused and frustrated that maybe I wasn't getting anywhere.

"I don't know, Aniki. I don't know!" he said as he pressed his palms onto his eyes as the tears slipped down to the ground.

I sighed as I walked over to him and bent down to see what he would do.

He looked up and reached out to me. Even with all my sins, both past and future, he hugged me with all of his heart. The only one who damned himself to me.

The only one who cared to figure out the person and mind of Uchiha Itachi. Not as the genius or the pride of the village…

But as the confused boy who didn't know what to do with his life.

I lifted him up and he rested his head on my shoulder, falling asleep in my arms as we walked back into the village. The darkness was around us. And it was cold, but I proudly displayed him in my arms to the  
merciless night, before the gods that were laughing down at us from heaven.

Or at least, at me and this feeling of objectionable affection...

***/*/*/*/*/**  
He opens his eyes and stands up. Going up to a slow stream of water, he stares at his own reflection, as murky as it is.

"You're weak," he whispers to himself, unable to distinguish if it's a message for himself or to his brother.

When he left his brother out to survive, his little brother shouted that he wanted to live, reflecting the words that screamed from the depths of his decrepit soul. And somehow, he wanted his brother to find the person he had lost. Itachi didn't know where his past self went, but Sasuke had his memories of him, buried as they were. As dusty, cold, shriveled, and lifeless as they were.

Itachi had said, "You're not even worthy of killing."

Then, as he sits back into his place, his eyes begin to grow heavy. And soon, he falls asleep, comforted by the unrelenting eyes of his loved one as they burned into him like the flames of hell.

In a dream, he's looking down at Sasuke, piercing him with his cruel eyes. Those hateful eyes staring back at him. He's pinned him to the ground of the wooden genkan. With loving, unkind eyes, he leans forward and then closes them as he whispers into Sasuke's ear the words he couldn't tell him in their waking hours,

"You are the only one worthy of living. You are the only one who can end my suffering. You are the only one I want to kill me, Sasuke."

Opening his eyes and pulling back, he presses his lips on his and then licks his neck.

"And I wait for you to grow up, so impatiently."

Into this void where no one else can hear, Sasuke screams out of fear, pleasure, and pain; Itachi has opened their own separate, secret place in hell. Sasuke's eyes close out of this thorough infliction upon all of his being and soul. He shouts his older brother's name and tries to understand why it comes down to this, confused as to what is true. They both think about what is the difference between love and hate.

Itachi smiles at this as he whispers into Sasuke's ear, biting it until it bleeds, "Hate me until there is nothing else you can see."

Yes, that's right. You will always be mine.

Because I'll kill anyone who makes you see otherwise. Even if it's you, Sasuke. Even if you turn against yourself…

And that's all right. I'll be here to pick up the pieces because I find great fulfillment and purpose within your realm of pain.

Because this is how I "love", Sasuke.

**Owari. / The End.**

**Author****'****s note: ** Blame it on my friend Nikoniko. She's the one who got me addicted to this couple. *winces* Of course I couldn't _not_ touch them, now could I? Besides, Itachi's psycho and you know how I love characters like that. (Especially sexy ones… *drools*)  
I made it from the first and third person perspective because Itachi seems to be a very difficult character to capture. In this confusion, I have tried to put it into writing. I hope that I have captured this well, having only seen the anime. (Please don't scold me for not knowing anything but Sasuke, he's been my fave since the first I saw him years ago.) But it was damn fun to make this!

Def - Genkan is an entranceway. It's the place where people put their shoes before they enter someone's house.

**July 23, 2004**


End file.
